ONLY ONE CRIME IN 100 PROSECUTED IN BRITAIN

Just one crime in every hundred now leads to the offender being caught, charged and punished by the courts, latest statistics reveal. The Home Office's own figures showed crime on the rise last year and more criminals being caught by police, yet the numbers being sent before the court dropped sharply by eight per cent year-on-year.

Opposition critics blamed the dramatic rise in the use of 'summary justice' - instant fines or cautions and warnings handed out by the police - and accused the Government of creating an 'arbitrary' justice system, letting off hundreds of thousands of criminals with punishments no tougher than a parking ticket.

In the year to June 2006 the British Crime Survey measured 11,016,000 offences against adults living in households in England and Wales - up from 10,912,000 in 2005. However an analysis by independent statisticians - accepted by the Home Office - shows that the British Crime Survey counts only a third of all crimes as it ignores all offences against businesses including shoplifting, 'victimless' crimes such as drug possession and any offences committed against under-16s.

The number of criminals caught and dealt with by police rose by six per cent year-on-year from 1,428,000 to 1,516,000. Yet the number of offenders charged and sent before the courts - magistrates or crown courts -fell by eight per cent from 453,000 to 423,000. More than 80,000 court cases were dropped or discontinued due to suspects or witnesses failing to show up, and the number actually sentenced in courts dropped five per cent from 317,000 to 306,000 - less than one per cent of the estimated 33million-plus crimes each year. Most were given fines or community punishments and the number sent to jail fell from 80,000 to 76,000 last year.

Meanwhile soaring numbers of crimes were diverted into the 'instant' justice system. The use of police cautions or on-the-spot fines rose by more than 200,000 year-on-year. Ministers are encouraging greater use of these rapid punishments even for relatively serious crimes such as shoplifting, to avoid clogging up the courts and to ease the prison overcrowding crisis. The police also tend to favour instant punishments as they involve less red-tape than a criminal prosecution but still count as 'solved' crimes, helping them meet Home Office targets.

But critics claim the policy represents an increasingly soft approach which merely encourages repeat offending, while up to a third of fines are never paid. The number of fixed penalty notices handed out by police is rising fast with 146,481 in the year to March, more than double the previous year's total of 63,639.

Ministers faced fierce criticism recently for extending the use of 80 spot fines - introduced four years ago - to cover shoplifting offences up to a value of 200 pounds. Since the law on cannabis was relaxed three years ago police have stopped arresting most users and instead given them a warning - which counts as a 'detected' offence but carries no criminal record. Last year 66,000 cannabis users received such warnings instead of being charged, up from just 39,000 a year earlier.

Numbers of Penalty Notices for Disorder - spot fines for yobbish and anti-social behaviour - have also rocketed to 110,000 in the year to March, up from just 49,000 a year earlier. And the use of cautions by police as an alternative to bringing charges rocketed by 22 per cent 327,000 year-on-year.

Cautions can be handed out for burglary, assaults and possessing Class A drugs. Shadow Home Secretary, David Davis, said: 'It is bad enough that so many people are committing crimes, it is outrageous that so many people are getting away with it. 'Labour have consistently undermined our criminal justice system by effectively decriminalising many crimes. 'The solution is to simplify and reform our criminal justice system so people can be properly and effectively punished, not to arbitrarily divert offenders into a system where serious crimes are punished with the equivalent of a parking ticket or warning note.'

Crime levels have begun rising since John Reid took over as Home Secretary in May - bringing to an end more than a decade of gradual falls. Muggings, low-level violence and drug possession are all on the rise after the Government relaxed the laws on drinking and cannabis, and scrapped a high-profile robbery crackdown.

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